In 2025, the issue of energy security has once again moved to the center of European politics. After wars, sanctions, price shocks, and the accelerated “green transition,” Europe is entering a new phase in which energy is no longer just a technical or economic sector. It becomes the foundation of geopolitics, industrial strategy, and national resilience.
Today, Europe is simultaneously moving in two directions — toward greater autonomy and toward deeper integration. These two processes do not contradict each other, although this is often how they are portrayed in public debates. Autonomy helps reduce dependence on individual suppliers, while integration creates a broader zone of stability where EU countries can exchange resources and contain risks.
In my opinion, the biggest challenge for Europe today is not choosing between these two models, but the ability to combine them into a unified strategy. Energy security can no longer be a national category — it has become systemic, supranational, and technologically complex. That is why the question “between autonomy and integration” is not only political, but strategic in the broadest sense.
How Europe Became Dependent
The European energy architecture we have today is the result of decades of choices, compromises, and economic conveniences. For many years, the issue of security of supply remained secondary — far below the issue of price. This created the foundation for the dependence Europe faced in 2022–2024.
The turning point came with the gas crises of 2006 and 2009, when political conflicts effectively halted the transit of energy resources. The EU first realized the vulnerability of its own model, but the response was partial. Instead of a systemic reconsideration of dependence on a single supplier, most countries limited themselves to reserve agreements or improvements to individual routes.
As a result, by the mid-2010s Russia remained the dominant partner in Europe’s gas portfolio. Cheap raw materials, long-term contracts, and infrastructural inertia created an illusion of stability — but it was a stability based on political risks, not economic logic.
The beginning of the green transition also did not solve this issue. On the contrary, the rapid growth of renewable generation made the system more sensitive to peak loads and required gas as a balancing resource. Thus, medium-term gas demand even increased.
Only after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine did Europe do what it should have done ten years earlier: diversify routes, shift to LNG, and begin building a new energy diplomacy. A rapid increase in LNG imports from the United States and Qatar, record Norwegian production, and the activation of projects in North Africa became the most significant changes of the last decade.
But it must be acknowledged: these changes happened not because Europe was ready for a new stage, but because the previous model ceased to exist. The EU’s history of dependence is a history of delayed decisions. That is why today’s debates about autonomy and integration are not only strategic but also corrective.
Despite Europe’s desire for greater self-sufficiency, the reality of internal resources remains limited. Peaks in North Sea oil and gas production are long behind, and the potential for expansion is largely exhausted. Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom are reducing production due to economic, environmental, and political factors.
Individual countries are trying to develop alternative resources: biomass can cover specific segments of heating but is limited by land resources; geothermal energy is growing rapidly in Central Europe but still requires high investment and long payback cycles; hydrogen is playing an increasingly important role in EU strategies but remains more of a cross-sector project than a real tool for energy autonomy.
Europe’s internal potential is important, but not decisive. The continent does not have the resource base to fully supply itself with traditional or non-traditional energy carriers.
Renewable energy is the key to Europe’s long-term independence. Solar, wind, and hydro generation today form the foundation of the future energy system. However, they cannot become a “full local replacement” for fossil fuels without three critical components: high-capacity storage that can balance daily and seasonal fluctuations; flexible networks capable of quickly redirecting surpluses or shortages between countries; backup generation that insures the system during force-majeure peaks.
There is a misconception that a country can achieve energy independence simply by installing more solar panels or wind turbines. In reality, energy is not the sum of generation sources — it is an integrated system.
My position as an expert is simple: absolute energy self-sufficiency for an individual EU country is almost unattainable. But a high level of autonomy is possible within an integrated system where countries mutually cover one another during peak periods and the pan-European network operates as a single balancing mechanism.
Integration as a Strategic Answer
Energy interconnectors and the common electricity market
The more fragmented an energy system is, the more vulnerable it becomes. The European Union realized this when in 2022–2024 countries with different generation structures experienced the crisis differently: those with strong cross-border interconnectors could maneuver, import surpluses, or export energy when needed. In other words, energy integration became “insurance against force majeure.”
Today, the common electricity market allows optimization of peak loads, reduction of price volatility, and mitigation of renewable seasonality. Interconnectors between France, Spain, Poland, and the Baltic states have become real “energy bridges,” increasing resilience not only of individual states but of the entire European energy system.
In other words, integration creates a scale effect that no individual country can achieve on its own.
Forms of Energy Solidarity
European energy solidarity is not a political gesture but a pragmatic tool of survival. The clearest examples include: joint gas purchases, which lowered prices and prevented competition between countries in an overheated market; coordination of strategic reserves, allowing states to exchange stocks and ensure minimum storage levels; distribution of peak loads, enabling France, Germany, or the Czech Republic to receive electricity from neighbors within an hour — practically eliminating the risk of national blackouts.
These mechanisms would never emerge under a model of complete energy isolation. Integration became the foundation of collective security — an energy analog of NATO.
Integration ≠ Dependence
Public discussions often introduce a simple but false claim: that integration makes Europe dependent on external partners. In reality, the opposite is true.
Properly designed integration reduces dependence because it diversifies supply sources, creates alternative routes, and distributes risks across a larger system.
Europe integrates not because politics demands it — but because the physics of the energy system does. Without cross-border lines, renewables would be unstable, industry uncompetitive, and households vulnerable.
This is why I believe the future of EU energy security is not “self-sufficiency of individual states,” but mutual self-sufficiency within a large integrated system.
The Technological Factor
Europe’s energy security is becoming less dependent on classical resources and more dependent on technology. Previously, security was based on physical volumes of gas, oil, and electricity. In 2025, the situation has changed: what matters now is not how much resource a country has, but how flexible, digital, and integrated its energy system is.
Smart grids and the digitalization of the energy sector allow real-time balancing of renewable generation, prevention of overloads, flexible consumption management, loss reduction, and optimization of cross-border flows. Digitalization effectively transforms the European electricity market into a single dynamic system.
Energy storage addresses the “seasonal problem.” Modern storage — from lithium-ion systems to hydrogen tanks and gravity reserves — significantly reduces weather-related unpredictability. In the coming years, they will play the role gas once played: the main balancing resource.
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) represent a new stage in Europe’s nuclear debate: lower capital costs, faster construction, flexible placement, and the ability to support renewables without large-scale grid interventions. For a continent seeking to reduce external dependence, SMRs may become a key long-term tool.
Conclusion: A New Model of European Energy Security
Europe is entering a period when energy security can no longer rely on simple solutions. A successful model today is a multilayered structure where national autonomy is combined with the integration of the entire market.
Internal resources and renewables form the basis of autonomy, but cannot ensure stability without technological modernization and strong network connections. The common electricity market, interconnectors, cross-border flows, and solidarity mechanisms create system-wide resilience that no individual state can build alone.
Europe has moved from deep dependence on a single supplier to diversified partnerships and multi-vector energy diplomacy — from a vulnerable structure to a model of “managed interdependence,” where risks are distributed, not concentrated.
The biggest mistake today is to oppose autonomy and integration. They are not alternatives — they are two parts of one strategy. Autonomy provides internal resilience; integration provides external stability. Only their combination guarantees what energy policy in the 21st century must ensure: continuity, affordability, and predictability.
Europe now has a chance to build a new model of energy security — not defensive and reactive, but strategic, technological, and forward-looking. And its success will depend not on resources or political statements, but on cooperation, investment in innovation, and the pragmatic alignment of national and European interests.
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